Rex Smith: Stars may be in the hallways

Only one person I went to high school with grew up to be famous in Hollywood, and with all due respect I must suggest her success probably had less to do with her considered acting skills than with her considerable physical assets, including legs that were reported to have been insured for $1 million.

Here I will withhold the lady’s name, lest you think I’m just bitter because she turned me down the one time I got up the nerve to ask her on a date. She was quite pretty, but it’s safe to say that nobody at our big public high school expected her to achieve greatness.

By contrast, imagine what James Franco’s classmates remember. After attending high school in California, he became a college dropout while launching his acting career. But if he was ever an underachiever, he long ago recovered.

A profile in The New York Times reports that the day after he hosted the Academy Awards last week, he showed up for a morning class at Yale, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in English. He is also set to pick up a master’s degree in film from New York University this spring, to add to the master’s in fiction writing he got from Brooklyn College and the master’s in fine arts he earned at Columbia — both last year, when four movies were released with Franco in starring roles, including “127 Hours,” which got him an Oscar nomination.

This is not meant as a paean to James Franco, nor as a tweak of my classmate who portrayed Daisy Duke on TV — oops, that slipped out! — but more to raise the question about what talent may be hanging around the lockers in high school hallways hereabouts.

Fame is often more a function of luck than ability, but people can’t achieve great things if they’re not prepared when the right cards are dealt to their hand. So we owe young people the grounding that can give them a chance; what they do then is left to their own best efforts and the touch of fate.

This notion keeps coming back to me as we hear about program pullbacks that are being forced in local schools here and across the country as governments cut spending. It’s hard not to wonder what the result might be on the kids who could grow up to be James Franco, or even my friend, “Daisy Duke.”

Last week a rumor hit my e-mail that the entire arts program would be cut at the Averill Park Central School District in Rensselaer County. I know some great kids in those schools, and three weeks ago I was thrilled by the music created by the Averill Park Chamber Singers at Albany Pro Musica’s annual high school choral festival.

Not true, the superintendent assured our reporter — not all arts programs will be cut — but dozens of employees will lose their jobs and every department in the school district will bear the brunt of $4 million that will be pulled from a $55.4 million annual budget.

It’s happening all over, in cities, suburbs and rural districts alike. Albany schools have laid off 200 staffers over the past two years, and another 120 are likely to lose their jobs before the next school year starts. Schools are set for closing in North Colonie, Troy, Berlin and Bethlehem.

You will read more about similar cuts in months ahead. It’s inevitable, it seems, because state officials seem determined to cut aid to schools and cap what local districts can raise from property taxes. You can’t blame them: We’re all frustrated by our tax burden, not to mention the drag it places on growth. But there’s a greater threat in viewing education as an expense rather than as an investment.

With apologies to professional educators, I humbly suggest our schools have three key tasks: First, to establish a skilled and resilient work force. Second, to prepare people for citizenship’s broad responsibilities. Third, to raise students’ sights to value beauty and diversity.

Among these, no one goal is any less important than another. So schools can’t stop at the basics. Math, science and language arts are crucial, but so are athletics and fine arts. A kid working backstage on a school musical, passing a basketball to a teammate and learning to read modern poetry is gaining on all fronts — and we all have a stake in that student’s success.

James Franco, by the way, went to a great public high school, where he was active in plays. Maybe a mediocre school wouldn’t have slowed him down. But I’d hate to be to blame for leaving a kid like him in my local school unprepared for opportunity. Few kids will grow up to such success; all of them deserve as good a shot at it as we can give them.